Falls Count Anywhere

01-11-07

Someone woke up grumpy.

RAW
Well, if I ever understood why Michael Goodson stopped doing Chairshots, it was this Monday. RAW was hideously awful. The entire show wasn’t crap; there were moments of lucidity that were watchable, but so much full-on crap. I understand that the worst segment of all-time was done to build to a real program with Donald Trump, but still, they could just as easily have done it on the website instead of putting that festering piece of crap on Monday Night.

We opened with a John Cena interview that tried to keep Umaga as a monster. No promo can do that, but they tried and Cena did as good as he could. Coach came out and that ended up bringing out The Great Khali. He set up Khali as the next challenger to Cena. They did Umaga right along the lines as they would have built up an opponent to Bruno Sanmartino, but just throwing Khali at Cena is completely wrong, though it does mean that we don’t have to deal with a bunch of Khali matches to build him up.

Jeff Hardy and Kenny Dykstra had a match that would have been good, but so much of it took place during a commercial that it was lost on the viewing audience. Hardy has been doin’ well lately, which is a very good thing. There’s a lot of positive buzz around him right now because he seems to have really turned his life around. Sadly, the best thing they could have done for him was to bring back the Hardyz full time, but they’re not about to do that.

Jeff hit his Mule Kick and a really nice Pescado. Kenny’s got all the tools, they just need to make them all work together and get the stank of Spirit Squad off of him. The match had one of those endings. Johnny Nitro ran in and interfered, but that allowed Ric Flair to low-blow Kenny and that allowed Hardy to hit the Twist of Fate and the Swanton for the win. Would have been much better without the break.

They went to great lengths to get over how serious H’s injury was. They’ll take any opportunity they can to make HHH look like a hero.

Victoria and Melina took on Mickie James and Maria in a match that wasn’t good, but at least it was booked right. This was short and they had a Maria Broncobuster spot. I get why every woman is giving the Broncobuster, but really, every one does it! They should find a new suggestive move for them. Victoria ended up slapping Melina and that allowed Maria to roll her up, but it only got 2.

Mickie hit a Thesz Press on Victoria on the outside, but Melina managed to get a Bulldog on Maria to get the pin. Not too pretty, but they should be rebuilding Victoria as a monster woman.

We're fired.

In what will go down as the worst segment in the history of RAW, Rosie O’Donnell lost to Donald Trump. These were two look-alikes, but even though they were fake, they had a real match. I have to say I kinda liked the guy playing Trump (Johnny Jeter is the smart money) but Rosie was bad.

This was awful and at first the crowd just didn’t care and after that, the crowd hated it with the fiery passion of seven suns. The match was awful and after a while, the crowd started chanting ‘We Want Wrestling’ and even ‘TNA’.

There’s a major problem with that. Vince McMahon was at ringside and he’ll take those responses one of two ways. First, and the one that’s most dangerous, is that he’ll think it was actual heel heat and give these things to us again. The other option is that he’ll think the crowd was being unreasonable and he’ll give us more of this because that’s what he thinks the crowd should get. There’s word that the mentality is changing and that Vince is more up to hearing criticism (he heard it after the ECW PPV and had been taking positive measures) but this was just awful. It had to sting that he was hearing TNA chants.

This was the first shot in an angle to bring Donald Trump in for WrestleMania, and they better make good with it fast. If they have him show up next week and say that what Vince did was crap and that he’s suing or some such, that’d be a good way to start an angle, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen now. If I was The Donald, I’d totally steer clear, even if I was a friend of Vince’s.

Carlito beat Chris Masters. This was short and the crowd had yet to recover from the previous segment. Masters hit a Press Slam and a PowerSlam, but Torrie Wilson came out and used the ring bell which allowed Carlito to hit the Backpack for the win. I still can’t believe they did the Rosie-Donald thing.

Edge and Orton came out lookin’ like hell. They said that they got beat up, but that they put HHH out. This brought out Shawn Michaels who did a great interview showing off his range. They set up a handicapped match for next week. It’ll be interesting to see where they go now. I’m betting H is back in a chair to hit Edge.

Cryme Tyme beat Cade and Murdoch. This was a basic match with the heels working over Shad until he made the tag and JTG came out. Meh.

I'll just stand here while you fall over, okay?

The Great Khali beat John Cena via DQ. Khali barely moved. Armando brought a chair in and Cena hit Khali with it and that got him DQed. Khali then continued his offense on Cena, hitting the Tree Slam and then left. Armando then brought in Umaga who attacked Cena again.

Pure crap. There was the Edge and Orton and Michaels segment, but everything else was pretty much garbage of one from or another. Hardy-Dykstra was ruined by commercial placement, the women weren’t given any time (and the talent was thin) and the booking is horrid. They beat another lumbering oaf in the main event mix and that’s the worst thing that could happen. Look at how big Umaga got over as a heel. Not too much. Now look at how well Matt Hardy was doing as a face. So well that they had to cut the legs out from under him.

The WWE needs to see where things are right now and make the right steps to bring back the audience. RAW was wretched and it’ll be a long time before the Rosie-Trump match will be topped for flat-out awfulness, but they’ll say it was all worth it if it gets them any big press (which it will not). SmackDown! did a 3.0 last week, and that was without the crap that RAW put on. They’ve gotta start working on their booking and Vince needs to understand what his audience wants.

There’s another problem. The WWE is banking on Donald Trump being a big player and getting them mainstream attention. It may be too late for that with Trump. Despite the Rosie feud, the Donald isn’t exactly blowin’ up numbers right now. The Apprentice is down and there’s no buzz around Trump at the moment. While the way they used Federline was OK, they need to get more out of it if they’re gonna try and make Trump into a draw for Mania. I’m not sure what they think they can do, but with the way creative has been lately, I don’t see it working.

ECW makes me angry!
This is the only thing I have to say about the ECW show from Tuesday: They had CM Punk get pinned by Hardcore Holly. Don’t get me wrong, I like Holly, he’s talented and I think given a real push he could mean something to ECW, but having him pin Punk will only hurt Punk. Punk’s a giant talent, he’s a great worker and he’s over with the crowd. They have Punk get pinned and they let Khali squash Tommy Dreamer. That shows you the direction of Vince McMahon. It’s not surprising, it’s just annoying.

That’s all I can take for this week. I’ll be back on Monday, hopefully with better news.

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Chris Garcia